Taking versus taxing: an analysis of conscription in a private information economy

Thomas Koch () and Javier Birchenall
Additional contact information
Thomas Koch: Federal Trade Commission

Public Choice, 2016, vol. 167, issue 3, No 1, 177-199

Abstract: Abstract Most countries currently man their militaries through conscription (i.e., a draft). Conventional wisdom suggests that, by lowering the budgetary cost of the military, a draft reduces distortionary taxation, especially when military needs are large. We find that this intuition is misguided. When income taxes are set optimally, voluntary enlistments lead to less distortionary taxation than a draft, because the tax base left behind by a volunteer army tends to be more productive than that after a draft. For reasonable parameter values, drafts are more distortionary (and less socially desirable) when military needs are large.

Keywords: Conscription; Optimal taxation; Tax distortion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11127-016-0334-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:pubcho:v:167:y:2016:i:3:d:10.1007_s11127-016-0334-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/11127/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-016-0334-7

Access Statistics for this article

Public Choice is currently edited by WIlliam F. Shughart II

More articles in Public Choice from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().